This Halloween, some Barrie, Ont., elementary students will not go to school dressed as witches, goblins or zombies — but in simple shades of orange and black. The dress code is “an effort to respect the diverse value of … families,” according to a letter sent out by one school.

Similar ”orange-and-black” days have been decreed around Ottawa schools this year by parents and teachers. In parts of Quebec, costumes are permitted — but junk food restrictions have barred teachers and administrators from distributing candy to students.

In Calgary, two elementary schools put a kibosh on “scary” costumes, in favour of “caring” costumes.

This year critics have even denounced the Oct. 31 celebration as a conduit for racists. Ohio University’s Students Teaching About Racism in Society launched a poster campaign featuring members of visible minorities glumly holding photos of revellers clad in Pocahontas, suicide-bomber and geisha-girl costumes with the tagline: “This is not who I am and this is not okay.”

And thus, Halloween — a holiday that has survived rampant hooliganism, moral panics and poisoned candy scares — is slowly being tamed by nothing more than political correctness.

A one-night festival of ghoulish subject matter, unhealthy food and talking to strangers, it is no surprise that Halloween is an annual magnet for moral criticism. Halloween is when parental paranoia is “market-tested,” wrote American columnist Lenore Skenazy wrote in a 2010 blog post. “If a new fear flies on Halloween, it’s probably going to catch on the rest of the year, too.”

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In the holiday’s earliest days, Oct. 31 filled the streets with “hoodlums and morons,” according to a 1945 editorial by the Toronto Telegram. That year, a Halloween riot broke out in the city’s east end, after police tried to break up an open-air party. Twenty two years later, a horde of more than 1,000 young Vancouverites spontaneously trashed a quiet North Shore shopping village.

Since the 1970s, Halloween fears have mostly involved tainted treats; razor blades in apples and chocolate bars injected with rat poison. Spooked by rumours of sabotaged Halloween candy, dozens of municipal councils enacted trick-or-treating bans, and home-baked treats quickly became a quaint relic. But to date, the only confirmed case of tainted Halloween candy occurred in 1974 when Houston dad Ronald Clark O’Bryan murdered his eight-year-old son as part of a life insurance scam by spiking a package of Pixy Stix with cyanide.

In recent years, parents’ groups have raised new alarms about roaming trick-or-treaters falling prey to neighbourhood sex offenders. In the Los Angeles-area city of Riverside, Calif., last week, authorities passed a law preventing registered sex offenders from displaying Halloween decorations or even illuminating their porch light on Halloween. Similar restrictions are already on the books in suburban Atlanta, Georgia and Washington, D.C.

Statistically speaking, though, the only apparent threat to trick-or-treaters on Halloween night is traffic. According to statistics gathered by the U.S. Centre for Disease Control between 1976 and 1996, children are four times more likely to be struck by a car on Halloween than on other nights.

Domestic trick-or-treaters may face their own uniquely Canadian dangers. In Churchill, Man., Halloween arrives just as hundreds of polar bears gather around the town waiting for Hudson Bay to freeze. As such, the community’s 300-or-so trick-or-treaters need to be guarded by a combined force of Mounties, firefighters and conservation officers circling the community in helicopters and heavy trucks.

R.L. Stine, famed author of hundreds of scary books for children, says his own Halloween nostalgia stems from its inherent liberation. “The overwhelming thrill came from going out of the house at night and wandering freely around the neighborhood with no parents,” he wrote in a 2010 New York Times op-ed. “Halloween was a night of incredible freedom.”

“Halloween is a role reversal holiday,” says Cindy Dell Clark, a Rutgers University anthropologist specializing in childhood culture. While under the thumb of adults the rest of the year, on Halloween night children get to dress up as grown-ups, talk to strangers, brave frightening icons and consume vast amounts of a substance that’s normally controlled, she said. In the never-ending struggle for power between parents and children, Halloween is a much-needed “relief valve,” says Ms. Clark.

Halloween’s pagan origins have earned it official scorn from most major religions, and when trick-or-treaters come to the door of Calgary-area pastor Paul Ade, they walk away not with candy, but with a Bible.

Mr. Ade is the founder of JesusWeen, a Christian alternative to Halloween gaining traction in Canada, the United States and the U.K. Instead of chocolate bars and lollipops, JesusWeen participants hand out Bibles, pieces of scripture or other Christian-themed gifts. JesusWeen participants can even dress up — although as superheroes and princesses rather than witches or ghosts. “We as Christians believe in life, not death,” Mr. Ade explains.

“We’re not saying Halloween should be cancelled, we’re just saying JesusWeen is an alternative for many people that want something different,” he said.

Naturally, the practice has drawn charges of preachiness. “People say the kids can’t handle the Bible,” says Mr. Ade. “But the kids can handle witches and spells and zombies?”

The Canadian Council of Muslim Theologians maintain a 1,600-word post on their website that breaks down why the “shirk and false beliefs” of Halloween night make it impermissible to Muslims. A widely circulated list by three Canadian Muslim authors offers tips to Muslim parents on how to console children upset at missing out on Halloween. “Talking about Halloween in the context of a fiery speech against the holiday will not help Aisha or Ali see why they should not participate,” reads tip number three. “Instead, explain that every group or culture has its own celebrations, and we, as Muslims have our own.”

Catholics have come down particularly hard on Halloween in recent years as the holiday gained in popularity in the neighbourhoods surrounding the Vatican. In 2009, the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, condemned the celebration as a night of “terror, fear and death” underpinned by dangerous strains of occultism.

“From a Jewish religious perspective, it absolutely is a no-no,” said Rabbi Michal Shekel, executive director of the Toronto Board of Rabbis. “But I think you will find that many less observant Jews probably view it very secularly and celebrate it.” And, while pious Jews may be forbidden from sending their children out trick or treating, they get a pass to giving out candy to gentile trick-or-treaters, since it promotes peace with one’s neighbours and “wards off unneeded hatred towards the Jewish people,” according to an essay by American Rabbi Michael Broyde.

A similar view is shared by Toronto Imam Habeeb Alli. “Do Muslim children trick-or-treat? Of course,” he said. “Candy-sharing, being friendly to one’s neighbour and being flexible with our children is just part of the Canadian culture.”

In the United States, religious calls to ban Halloween reached a boiling in the 1990s as a retaliation to efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union to scrub any mention of religion from the school system. In 1989, a small county in Florida banned Halloween on the grounds that it was a pagan religious holiday. By century’s end, dozens of school boards across the country had followed suit. Anti-Halloween sentiment soon spread to Canada. In 1998, three Thunder Bay Catholic schools banned Halloween for promoting “evil” values.

Even Wiccans, who view Halloween as one of their most important religious holidays, have been known to prompt the occasional school Halloween cancellation. In 2006, the Puyallup School District in Washington State cancelled all Halloween activities after complaints that children costumed in green makeup, black robes and pointy hats were offensive to Wiccans.

“Most of the Wiccans I know have bigger stuff to worry about than cardboard-cut-out green-faced witches on Halloween,” said Nicole Cooper, high priestess at Toronto’s Wiccan Church of Canada. “It’s nice to be sensitive, but I think you can sometimes be oversensitive about this thing.”

And, for every squeamish parent or outraged moralist who has called for Halloween’s demise, there have been equally outraged parents ready to rush to the day’s defence. When an arts school in Portland, Ore., cancelled the wearing of Halloween costumes for reasons of “equity” among students, they were immediately met with a 250-signature pro-costume petition from parents. “This country’s obsession with the politically correct is really getting out of hand,” blogged one parent.

In Barrie, parent Stefanie Sellers has mounted a media campaign against plans for orange and black day. “It’s like they’re trying to take out Christmas. How is Halloween disrespectful?” she told Postmedia. “All they needed was one person to say, ‘This offends me’ and they get rid of it. Getting rid of it offends me and that’s why we have a problem.”

Calgarians have similarly denounced this year’s plan for “caring costumes.” “I don’t really see, on the whole, the benefit of this,” Mike de Boer, chairman of a Calgary parent council, told Postmedia.

Meanwhile, in Vancouver and Toronto — Canada’s two most ethnically and religiously diverse cities — Halloween’s place in the public school system stands largely uncontested. Twelve years ago in Vancouver, mother Rubina Bedirian petitioned the Vancouver School Board to abolish Halloween because it taught children that “evil and violence is acceptable.” In its place, she recommended the schools celebrate “friendship day.” Her pleas were politely brushed off.

“There are people that think we’re banning Halloween. Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Shari Schwartz-Maltz, spokeswoman for the Toronto District School Board, which will as always host haunted houses, costume parades and pumpkin carving competitions.

“If there’s a parent that doesn’t really believe in Halloween, their kid doesn’t have to be part of it,” said Ms. Schwartz-Maltz.

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